Love is in the Air

We all know how reliable a news source News Corporation is. I mean, hell, the word “news” is in its name! However, it’s a bit alarming that our buddy Rupert Murdoch is wining and dining Chinese elitists, as he attempts to buy out Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

“China has never been a make-or-break proposition for the News Corporation, since its operations here (Beijing) represent a small part of the company, which is valued at $68 billion. But Mr. Murdoch pushed for nearly 15 years to create a satellite television network that would cover every major market in the world, including China.

He coveted the $50 billion in ad spending that flows mainly to China’s state-owned news media whose products, even after years of improvements, still reflect propaganda directives as well as consumer demand.

The News Corporation’s competitors in television and film, the Walt Disney Company, Viacom and Time Warner, also had to accommodate Chinese demands as the price of admission to the local market.

But Mr. Murdoch gave more, his associates said.

‘The Chinese discovered that Rupert was a real emperor who controlled everything himself,’ said H. S. Liu, who oversaw government relations for the News Corporation in China. ‘His rivals had big, cautious bureaucracies that could not always deliver.’

China has long meant more than business to the Murdoch clan. Mr. Murdoch’s father, Keith, wrote about China as a war correspondent in the 1930s. As a newspaper proprietor in Australia, he collected Ming dynasty porcelain.”

Isn’t that darling? Well, at least someone is infatuated with the integrity of the Chinese media.